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lassign(n) Tcl Built-In Commands lassign(n)
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NAME
lassign - Assign list elements to variables
SYNOPSIS
lassign list ?varName ...?
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DESCRIPTION
This command treats the value list as a list and assigns successive
elements from that list to the variables given by the varName arguments
in order. If there are more variable names than list elements, the
remaining variables are set to the empty string. If there are more
list elements than variables, a list of unassigned elements is
returned.
EXAMPLES
An illustration of how multiple assignment works, and what happens when
there are either too few or too many elements.
lassign {a b c} x y z ;# Empty return
puts $x ;# Prints "a"
puts $y ;# Prints "b"
puts $z ;# Prints "c"
lassign {d e} x y z ;# Empty return
puts $x ;# Prints "d"
puts $y ;# Prints "e"
puts $z ;# Prints ""
lassign {f g h i} x y ;# Returns "h i"
puts $x ;# Prints "f"
puts $y ;# Prints "g"
The lassign command has other uses. It can be used to create the
analogue of the "shift" command in many shell languages like this:
set ::argv [lassign $::argv argumentToReadOff]
SEE ALSO
lindex(n), list(n), lrange(n), lset(n), set(n)
KEYWORDS
assign, element, list, multiple, set, variable
Tcl 8.5 lassign(n)